


A Neck But No Head

by HenryMercury



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Coda, Episode: s03e23 Insatiable, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-16 04:48:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1332520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HenryMercury/pseuds/HenryMercury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Argent men are trained to be soldiers, and Chris is no more and no less than that.<br/>Argent women are trained to be leaders—but there are no Argent women left. Chris is a bullet without a gun, an arrow shaft without a bow to give it force and guidance.</p><p>The nogitsune had asked what has a neck but no head—and Chris has an answer for it now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Neck But No Head

**Author's Note:**

> This is how I deal with my feelings.

Is a man who loses his child still a father?

Chris doesn’t know exactly how to answer that question. Victoria would have an opinion—she’d inform him of it curtly, tell him to stop being ridiculous and do something useful.

He sits with his back against the front door of the apartment, knocks his skull back into the wood. It doesn’t feel like anything. Nothing feels like anything, and everything feels like everything, and words just don’t do any of it justice but there’s nothing actions can help with now, either. He doesn’t remember coming home. He hopes he didn’t drive himself—whoever he rode with must have seen him inside and left him to be alone. That’s for the best, really. It’s what he thinks he’d have asked for if he was properly conscious at the time.

He hasn’t made it past the door, though. He’s in his house, his cave where he can hide, but any further in and he’ll be faced with altogether too much of what he’s lost.

 _I’m proud of you_ , Allison had said.

Chris slumps even lower to the ground and thinks about how little he deserves that praise, that faith.

_I’m proud of us._

He’d thought she was talking about him leaving her. After all, what parent _expects_ their strong, clever teenage daughter to fall like that, right out of the blue? He’d thought... Well, he’d thought wrong, is the only thing that matters. He thinks he does that a lot.

Ever since Kate, since Victoria, since Gerard, since Chris’ entire family started crumbling around him, he hasn’t known what to do. He’s pretended, some of the time, lost himself in the firecracker sounds of bullets as they hurtle towards monsters and told himself that he’s fighting evil and it’s just that simple. It hasn’t been that simple in a long time, though. When it was black and white, when his sister and his father weren’t murderers and the code was the law and he had no reason to doubt it, the answers were laid out for him. Argent men are trained to be soldiers, and Chris is no more and no less than that.

Argent women are trained to be leaders—but there are no Argent women left. Chris is a bullet without a gun, an arrow shaft without a bow to give it force and guidance. He almost fired a round into a seventeen year old boy just days ago, and he’ll never even know whether or not he actually meant to do it—but Allison had known the answer when he didn’t, had made sure that all the pieces were in the right place.

The nogitsune had asked what has a neck but no head—and Chris has an answer for it now.

There’s a bottle of bourbon in one of the kitchen cupboards and he thirsts for it until he realises that even if he crawled over to find it his stomach wouldn’t hold it down.

Chris has been stoic. Outwardly he’s held himself together through familial death and disgrace, but he’s managed it because there’s always been someone else to hold on for. Allison... they were all that either of them had left. Chris had been desperate not to desert her but he’d never even been able to fathom the possibility of being the one left all alone. He still can’t, won’t, will wake up in a cold sweat soon, pad into his daughter’s room and see that she’s sleeping safely, remind himself to tell her he loves her when she wakes up.

There’s a noise, something shrill and grating. He feels dull vibrations against his hip and remembers his phone. He wonders absently if it’s Allison calling.

It isn’t.

The Sheriff’s contact information flashes on the screen as his ringtone sings out like the world isn’t wrong, isn’t ending, hasn’t ended, and while Chris is sure he’ll appreciate the gesture when he’s thinking straight, he genuinely doesn’t believe he could get any words out even if he did take the call. He rejects it and lets his cell drop to the floor beside him.

Time passes. He isn’t sure how much. It doesn’t matter. Part of him wonders why time is continuing on at all. He’s no stranger to this feeling, but it’s not something a person can really build up a tolerance to.

Is a tree without branches still a tree? When does it become a stump?

Is he supposed to stay in this town, this town where he lost his wife and his sister and his father and his daughter, where the code that held him fast like a spine was broken, where he went from family dinners to starving here in the dark? Is he supposed to keep fighting? Why? What for? They’re questions that Allison always had the answers to, always _was_ the answer to. She bound him to Beacon Hills’ rag tag pack, told him he couldn’t just sit there when people were getting hurt, wrote him a new code so that he could stand straight again.

There’s a knocking sound, a sharp rap. Chris feels the vibrations against his back. The noise comes again, and he slides away from the door, reaches up from where he’s sitting to fiddle with the handle. At the last moment, he uses it to drag himself to his feet for appearances’ sake.

Derek Hale is at the door. He’s holding a bag, and Chris smells Chinese food. Hale just holds it out wordlessly. Chris still isn’t sure he’ll keep any food down but it does smell good, and he is vaguely aware that he’s hungry. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he ate. It doesn’t seem to matter.

Chris nods in acknowledgement of Derek. Derek nods back, then turns on his heel and leaves. Chris supposes that he has experience in this kind of grieving, and he’s grateful for the silence. It occurs to him that Derek Hale has more family left now than he does. A manic, burbled laugh breaks out of him and then his eyes are filled with needles and wet heat, and the floodgates smash open for what he knows so much better than to believe will be the last time.

While he’s on his feet he stumbles into the kitchen to find a fork. He grabs the bourbon from the cupboard while he’s at it. It feels wrong to eat when he’ll never share another meal with his daughter, wrong to drink when she never even made it to the legal age. It’s wrong that he’s still here. So wrong that the way forward has iced over without her here to lead him anymore, without her to fight for. It’s wrong that by the end, Chris’ daughter was raising him, saving him, and he wasn’t there to save her back.

He thinks of the new code she left him with—

_We protect those who cannot protect themselves._

It sounds just like a parent’s motto.


End file.
